Sabelo J Ndlovu-Gatsheni
Biographic Data
| ID | 95957 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sabelo J Ndlovu-Gatsheni |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sabelo J |
| FAMILY NAME | Ndlovu-Gatsheni |
| SIGNATURE | NDLOVU-GATSHENI S J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Lecturer in African Studies at the Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK. |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 48 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 221 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 6 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Knowing - Unknowing: African Studies at the Crossroads
Thinking as Moving – Knowledge Practices and Decolonial Frames in African Studies
Architectural Expertise and the Coloniality of Knowledge: Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni in Conversation with Kenny Cupers
The structure of this interview will be in three parts. We will start with an introduction to some of your main ideas, particularly as articulated in your book Decolonization, Development and Knowledge in Africa. Then we will focus on how these ideas affect our understanding of architecture, and finally we will explore their repercussions for the writing of architectural history. PART 1 Kenny CupersI had initially asked you to be part of the conf…
Rethinking and Unthinking Development: Perspectives on Inequality and Poverty in South Africa and Zimbabwe
Development has remained elusive in Africa. Through theoretical contributions and case studies focusing on Southern Africa’s former white settler states, South Africa and Zimbabwe, this volume responds to the current need to rethink (and unthink) development in the region. The authors explore how Africa can adapt Western development models suited to its political, economic, social and cultural circumstances, while rejecting development practices …
European War and Global South Perspectives
Decolonizing Knowledge: Reflections from Africa
At the centre of the resurgent and insurgent decolonization of the 21st century—also known as decoloniality—reverberate overlapping existential (coloniality of being/denied/questioned being), material (dispossession/destitution/political economy of knowledge), historical (theft of history and denial of history), epistemic (cognitive empire/coloniality of knowledge), and identitarian (defined and ruled) issues. This article uses the case of Africa…
African Studies in Distress: German Scholarship on Africa and the Neglected Challenge of Decoloniality
This paper is a response to Matthias Basedau's article published in issue 55/2020 of the present journal. At a time when African Studies scholarship is rising beyond the flogging of dead horses, certain strands in the field in Germany seem to ignore much of the valuable scholarship and intellectual contributions by excellent African and non-African researchers alike. It is striking to see how Basedau falls prey to the same shortcomings that he dr…
The Contested Idea of South Africa
This book reflects on the complex and contested idea of South Africa, drawing on a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. Ever since the delineation of South Africa as a country, the many diverse groups of people contained within its borders have struggled to translate a mere geographical description into the identity of a people. Today the new struggles for South Africa' and to become South African' are inextricably intertwined with complex ch…
The primacy of knowledge in the making of shifting modern global imaginaries
Marxism and Decolonization in the 21st Century: Living Theories and True Ideas
Revisiting Marxism and decolonisation through the legacy of Samir Amin
Samir Amin’s legacy of deployment of Marxist science, dedication to pan-Africanism and commitment to revolutionary liberation of the global South from imperialism and capitalism is re-evaluated from an epistemological vantage point. This is necessary because Amin raised fundamental epistemological issues as he challenged the discipline of economics, built institutions which advanced alternative thinking, and consistently created concepts and theo…
Le long tournant décolonial dans les études africaines. Défis de la réécriture de l'Afrique
Cet article s'intéresse au long tournant décolonial et à la manière dont il a pu troubler d'autres tournants qui ont touché les sciences humaines et sociales. Le tournant décolonial continue d'animer les luttes visant à libérer les études africaines des imbrications coloniales, des modèles impériaux mondiaux, du carcan des area studies et de l'actuelle économie mondiale du savoir. Cette approche permet non seulement de révéler d'invisibles dynami…
Decolonization, Development and Knowledge in Africa: Turning Over a New Leaf
"This provocative book is anchored on the insurgent and resurgent spirit of decolonization of the twenty-first century. The author calls upon Africa to turn over a new leaf in the domains of politics, economy and knowledge as it frees itself from imperial global designs and global coloniality. With a focus on Africa and its Diaspora, the author calls for a radical turning over of a new leaf predicated on decolonial turn and epistemic freedom. The…
The History and Political Transition of Zimbabwe: From Mugabe to Mnangagwa
Geopolitics of Power and Knowledge in the Covid-19 Pandemic: Decolonial Reflections on a Global Crisis
This article offers a provisional decolonial reading of the crisis created by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The article performs five interrelated tasks. The first task addresses the question of knowledge and theorizing during exceptional moments. A decolonial case is made for seeking mitigations and solutions to COVID-19 based on the African knowledge and epistemologies from the Global South. Africa in particular and the Global S…
African Decolonization's Past and Present Trajectories
Decolonization has reemerged as a compelling vision of a better future
Rethinking and Unthinking Development: Perspectives on Inequality and Poverty in South Africa and Zimbabwe
Provisional Notes on Decolonizing Research Methodology and Undoing Its Dirty History
Decolonizing research methodology is a vast and complex task of undoing its dirty history. The dirty history is so hidden within research methodology that only a careful decolonial mind can unmask and reveal it. This task of decolonizing research methodology lies at the core of struggles for epistemic freedom involving rethinking and unthinking dominant ways of producing knowledge. This short article tackles the sacred cow of research methodology…
Provincializing Europe and Deprovincialising Africa: Prospects for Decolonizing the Humanities
Epistemic Freedom in Africa
Epistemic Freedom in Africa
Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization
The Onto-Decolonial Turn
A World without Others? Specter of Difference and Toxic Identitarian Politics
The specter of “difference” has been haunting the modern world since the time of colonial encounters. The paradigm of the “One,” which portended the death of difference and diversity, is equally problematic. Consequently, the modern world faces resilient and paradoxical notions of a world without difference, which continues to throw up toxic identitarian politics predicated on racism, tribalism, sexism, patriarchy, xenophobia, homophobia, and eve…
Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe: Politics, Power, and Memory
Making Sense of Cultural Nationalism and the Politics of Commemoration under the Third Chimurenga in Zimbabwe
This article examines the range of cultural events and activities that were promoted by the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) in the 2000s under the banner of the Third Chimurenga. It contributes to a lively debate on post-2000 cultural imaginings of a fetishised nation riddled by contestations over state power. The article posits that the ‘cultural’ nationalism that was promoted through the Third Chimurenga emerged…
Africa for Africans or Africa for 'Natives' Only? 'New Nationalism' and Nativism in Zimbabwe and South Africa
This article makes historical sense of the recent signs of the metamorphosis of nationalism into nativism in Zimbabwe and South Africa. The central thesis of the article is that the resurgence of Afro-radicalism and nativism in post-settler and post-apartheid societies partly reflected deep-rooted antinomies of black liberation thought and partly current ideological conundrums linked to the limits of both the African national project and global l…
RethinkingChimurengaandGukurahundiin Zimbabwe: A Critique of Partisan National History
This article examines how the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) sought to inscribe a nationalist monologic history in Zimbabwe in order prop up its claim to be the progenitor and guardian of the postcolonial nation. Since its formation in 1963, it has worked tirelessly to claim to be the only authentic force with a sacred historic mission to deliver the colonized people from settler colonial rule. To achieve this objective…
The Entrapment of Africa within the Global Colonial Matrices of Power: Eurocentrism, Coloniality, and Deimperialization in the Twenty-first Century
This article deploys world-systems analysis and the concept of coloniality to examine the experience of the African people within the modern world-system since 1492, a date that figuratively marks the birth of the modern world-system and its shifting international orders. Africa’s experience is contextualized within six international orders: the post-1492 order, the Westphalian order that emerged in 1648, the post-1884–1885 Berlin consensus, the …
Fiftieth Anniversary of Decolonisation in Africa: A Moment of Celebration or Critical Reflection
This article deploys the concept of coloniality of power to critically reflect on the decolonisation process, using a 'colonial difference' perspective which enables a critical reflection on the limits of decolonisation from the side of the ex-colonised ordinary citizens of Africa. Three principal arguments are advanced. First, celebration of the decolonisation process as the proudest moment in African history obscures the continuing operation of…
African Studies in Distress: German Scholarship on Africa and the Neglected Challenge of Decoloniality
This paper is a response to Matthias Basedau's article published in issue 55/2020 of the present journal. At a time when African Studies scholarship is rising beyond the flogging of dead horses, certain strands in the field in Germany seem to ignore much of the valuable scholarship and intellectual contributions by excellent African and non-African researchers alike. It is striking to see how Basedau falls prey to the same shortcomings that he dr…
Geopolitics of Power and Knowledge in the Covid-19 Pandemic: Decolonial Reflections on a Global Crisis
This article offers a provisional decolonial reading of the crisis created by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The article performs five interrelated tasks. The first task addresses the question of knowledge and theorizing during exceptional moments. A decolonial case is made for seeking mitigations and solutions to COVID-19 based on the African knowledge and epistemologies from the Global South. Africa in particular and the Global S…
Provisional Notes on Decolonizing Research Methodology and Undoing Its Dirty History
Decolonizing research methodology is a vast and complex task of undoing its dirty history. The dirty history is so hidden within research methodology that only a careful decolonial mind can unmask and reveal it. This task of decolonizing research methodology lies at the core of struggles for epistemic freedom involving rethinking and unthinking dominant ways of producing knowledge. This short article tackles the sacred cow of research methodology…
Beyond the Equator There Are No Sins: Coloniality and Violence in Africa
The phenomenon of violence has pervaded African people’s lives across precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial historical epochs. While it is easy to codify manifestations of violence such as precolonial raiding, colonial wars of conquest, and nationalist resistance wars, there are many other forms whose logic is harder to understand, such as terrorism, xenophobia, racist-inspired violence, criminality, rape, torture, and maiming. This study deplo…
Revisiting Marxism and decolonisation through the legacy of Samir Amin
Samir Amin’s legacy of deployment of Marxist science, dedication to pan-Africanism and commitment to revolutionary liberation of the global South from imperialism and capitalism is re-evaluated from an epistemological vantage point. This is necessary because Amin raised fundamental epistemological issues as he challenged the discipline of economics, built institutions which advanced alternative thinking, and consistently created concepts and theo…
African Decolonization's Past and Present Trajectories
Decolonization has reemerged as a compelling vision of a better future
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Phinda
Do ‘Africans’ exist? Genealogies and paradoxes of African identities and the discourses of nativism and xenophobia
One of the paradoxes of the making of African nations and African identities is the recent metamorphoses and mutations of African nationalism from civic principles founded on the slogan of ‘diverse people unite’ to narrow, autochthonous, nativist and xenophobic forms that breed violence. This article seeks to examine key contours in the making of African identities, with a specific focus on historical, cartographic, and hegemonic processes that c…
The Decolonial Mandela: Embodiment of Peace, Justice, and Humanism
This article provides a fresh decolonial reading of Nelson Mandela’s political life and legacy as an embodiment of critical decolonial ethics of liberation that is opposed to imperial/colonial/apartheid paradigm of war and its logics of racial profiling, classification, and hierarchization of human beings. The paradigm of war is underpinned by the paradigm of difference and working in combination, they enabled the denial of the humanity of black …
Re-thinking the Colonial Encounter in Zimbabwe in the Early Twentieth Century
An orthodox nationalist scholarship has always defined the colonial encounter between the Ndebele and the early Rhodesian settlers in the dichotomous terms of domination and resistance pioneered by T.O. Ranger in the 1960s. In this article, I seek to transcend this traditional conceptualisation of the colonial encounter by recognising mimicry, hybridity, negotiation and alienation as the central aspects of the encounter between the coloniser and …
A World without Others? Specter of Difference and Toxic Identitarian Politics
The specter of “difference” has been haunting the modern world since the time of colonial encounters. The paradigm of the “One,” which portended the death of difference and diversity, is equally problematic. Consequently, the modern world faces resilient and paradoxical notions of a world without difference, which continues to throw up toxic identitarian politics predicated on racism, tribalism, sexism, patriarchy, xenophobia, homophobia, and eve…
Crossing the Zambezi: The Politics of Landscape on a Central African Frontier
Crossing the Zambezi: The Politics of Landscape on a Central African Frontier Joann McGregor London and Harare, James Currey and Weaver Press, 2009 v+237 pp., ISBN: 978-1-84701-402-3 (James Currey
Provincializing Europe and Deprovincialising Africa: Prospects for Decolonizing the Humanities
Ali A Mazrui on the invention of Africa and postcolonial predicaments: ‘My life is one long debate’
Ali A Mazrui’s academic and intellectual fame provoked both deep admiration and severe criticism, causing his intellectual legacy to be caught up between what the South Sudanese scholar Dustan M Wai depicted as ‘Mazruiphilia’ (hagiographical celebration) and ‘Mazruiphobia’ (critical bashing). Mazrui died on 12 October 2014, leaving behind a ‘supermarket of ideas’ and a rich archive that easily immortalises him. This article aims to transcend both…
Racialised ethnicities and ethnicised races: Reflections on the making of South Africanism
Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatshenia*Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni is a Professor in the Department of Development Studies at the University of South Africa. His major publications include Do 'Zimbabweans' Exist? (Peter Lang 2009), The African Neo-Colonized World (CODESRIA, in-press), and over 50 journal articles and book chapters on history and politics in Zimbabwe and South Africa. a University of South Africa, Department of Development Studies , PO Box 392,…
Angola–Zimbabwe Relations: A Study in the Search for Regional Alliances
The common approach to the study of foreign policies of Southern African Development Community (SADC) states is to locate them within the context of ‘brother presidents’ and ‘sister liberation movements’. There is emphasis on liberation war camaraderie as a key variable. However, Angola–Zimbabwe (read as MPLA–ZANU-PF and MPLA–MDC) relations have no noticeable strong liberation war-time ties. The relations are traceable to the post-1980 period whe…
Re-thinking the Colonial Encounter in Zimbabwe in the Early Twentieth Century
An orthodox nationalist scholarship has always defined the colonial encounter between the Ndebele and the early Rhodesian settlers in the dichotomous terms of domination and resistance pioneered by T.O. Ranger in the 1960s. In this article, I seek to transcend this traditional conceptualisation of the colonial encounter by recognising mimicry, hybridity, negotiation and alienation as the central aspects of the encounter between the coloniser and …
Making Sense of Cultural Nationalism and the Politics of Commemoration under the Third Chimurenga in Zimbabwe
This article examines the range of cultural events and activities that were promoted by the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) in the 2000s under the banner of the Third Chimurenga. It contributes to a lively debate on post-2000 cultural imaginings of a fetishised nation riddled by contestations over state power. The article posits that the ‘cultural’ nationalism that was promoted through the Third Chimurenga emerged…
Africa for Africans or Africa for 'Natives' Only? 'New Nationalism' and Nativism in Zimbabwe and South Africa
This article makes historical sense of the recent signs of the metamorphosis of nationalism into nativism in Zimbabwe and South Africa. The central thesis of the article is that the resurgence of Afro-radicalism and nativism in post-settler and post-apartheid societies partly reflected deep-rooted antinomies of black liberation thought and partly current ideological conundrums linked to the limits of both the African national project and global l…
Do ‘Zimbabweans’ Exist: Trajectories of Nationalism, National Identity Formation and Crisis in a Postcolonial State
Angola–Zimbabwe Relations: A Study in the Search for Regional Alliances
The common approach to the study of foreign policies of Southern African Development Community (SADC) states is to locate them within the context of ‘brother presidents’ and ‘sister liberation movements’. There is emphasis on liberation war camaraderie as a key variable. However, Angola–Zimbabwe (read as MPLA–ZANU-PF and MPLA–MDC) relations have no noticeable strong liberation war-time ties. The relations are traceable to the post-1980 period whe…
Crossing the Zambezi: The Politics of Landscape on a Central African Frontier
Crossing the Zambezi: The Politics of Landscape on a Central African Frontier Joann McGregor London and Harare, James Currey and Weaver Press, 2009 v+237 pp., ISBN: 978-1-84701-402-3 (James Currey
Do ‘Africans’ exist? Genealogies and paradoxes of African identities and the discourses of nativism and xenophobia
One of the paradoxes of the making of African nations and African identities is the recent metamorphoses and mutations of African nationalism from civic principles founded on the slogan of ‘diverse people unite’ to narrow, autochthonous, nativist and xenophobic forms that breed violence. This article seeks to examine key contours in the making of African identities, with a specific focus on historical, cartographic, and hegemonic processes that c…
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Phinda
Fiftieth Anniversary of Decolonisation in Africa: A Moment of Celebration or Critical Reflection
This article deploys the concept of coloniality of power to critically reflect on the decolonisation process, using a 'colonial difference' perspective which enables a critical reflection on the limits of decolonisation from the side of the ex-colonised ordinary citizens of Africa. Three principal arguments are advanced. First, celebration of the decolonisation process as the proudest moment in African history obscures the continuing operation of…
Beyond the Equator There Are No Sins: Coloniality and Violence in Africa
The phenomenon of violence has pervaded African people’s lives across precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial historical epochs. While it is easy to codify manifestations of violence such as precolonial raiding, colonial wars of conquest, and nationalist resistance wars, there are many other forms whose logic is harder to understand, such as terrorism, xenophobia, racist-inspired violence, criminality, rape, torture, and maiming. This study deplo…
Racialised ethnicities and ethnicised races: Reflections on the making of South Africanism
Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatshenia*Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni is a Professor in the Department of Development Studies at the University of South Africa. His major publications include Do 'Zimbabweans' Exist? (Peter Lang 2009), The African Neo-Colonized World (CODESRIA, in-press), and over 50 journal articles and book chapters on history and politics in Zimbabwe and South Africa. a University of South Africa, Department of Development Studies , PO Box 392,…
RethinkingChimurengaandGukurahundiin Zimbabwe: A Critique of Partisan National History
This article examines how the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) sought to inscribe a nationalist monologic history in Zimbabwe in order prop up its claim to be the progenitor and guardian of the postcolonial nation. Since its formation in 1963, it has worked tirelessly to claim to be the only authentic force with a sacred historic mission to deliver the colonized people from settler colonial rule. To achieve this objective…
Empire, Global Coloniality and African Subjectivity
Global imperial designs, which have been in place since conquest by western powers, did not suddenly evaporate after decolonization. Global coloniality as a leitmotif of the empire became the order of the day, with its invisible technologies of subjugation continuing to reproduce Africa’s subaltern position, a position characterized by perceived deficits ranging from a lack of civilization, a lack of writing and a lack of history to a lack of dev…
Revisiting the national question and rethinking the political trajectory of Africa in the 21 st century
The national question in postcolonial Africa encapsulates the totality of national and social challenges that needs resolution. These include the burden of building postcolonial nations, reconstructing postcolonial states, promoting economic development, entrenching popular democracy, defending national sovereignty, consolidating political power, and eventually achieving regional integration and pan-African unity, as long term goals. To resolve t…
The Entrapment of Africa within the Global Colonial Matrices of Power: Eurocentrism, Coloniality, and Deimperialization in the Twenty-first Century
This article deploys world-systems analysis and the concept of coloniality to examine the experience of the African people within the modern world-system since 1492, a date that figuratively marks the birth of the modern world-system and its shifting international orders. Africa’s experience is contextualized within six international orders: the post-1492 order, the Westphalian order that emerged in 1648, the post-1884–1885 Berlin consensus, the …
Civic Agency in Africa: Arts of Resistance in the 21st Century
Examines the variety of mostly unorganized and informal ways in which Africans exercise agency and resist state power in the 21st century, through citizen action and popular culture, and how the relationship between ruler and ruled is being reframed. The recent eruption of popular protests across North Africa and the Middle East has reopened academic debate on the meaning and strategies of resistance in the 21st century. This book argues that Wes…
Lozikeyi Dlodlo Queen of the Ndebele: ‘A Very Dangerous and Intriguing Woman’
Lozikeyi Dlodlo Queen of the Ndebele is one of those rare books that deal with a rare theme in Ndebele history. Marieke Faber Clarke and Pathisa Nyathi's book is ground-breaking in the sense that i
Mugabeism: History, Politics, and Power in Zimbabwe
What is distinctive about this book is its interdisciplinary approach towards deciphering the complex meanings of President Gabriel Mugabe of Zimbabwe making it possible to evaluate Mugabe from a hist
The Decolonial Mandela: Embodiment of Peace, Justice, and Humanism
This article provides a fresh decolonial reading of Nelson Mandela’s political life and legacy as an embodiment of critical decolonial ethics of liberation that is opposed to imperial/colonial/apartheid paradigm of war and its logics of racial profiling, classification, and hierarchization of human beings. The paradigm of war is underpinned by the paradigm of difference and working in combination, they enabled the denial of the humanity of black …
Ali A Mazrui on the invention of Africa and postcolonial predicaments: ‘My life is one long debate’
Ali A Mazrui’s academic and intellectual fame provoked both deep admiration and severe criticism, causing his intellectual legacy to be caught up between what the South Sudanese scholar Dustan M Wai depicted as ‘Mazruiphilia’ (hagiographical celebration) and ‘Mazruiphobia’ (critical bashing). Mazrui died on 12 October 2014, leaving behind a ‘supermarket of ideas’ and a rich archive that easily immortalises him. This article aims to transcend both…
The Decolonial Mandela: Peace, Justice and the Politics of Life
A significant contribution to the emerging literature on decolonial studies, this concise and forcefully argued volume lays out a groundbreaking interpretation of the "Mandela phenomenon." Contrary to a neoliberal social model that privileges adversarial criminal justice and a rationalistic approach to war making, Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni identifies transformative political justice and a reimagined social order as key features of Nelson Mandela'…
El movimiento estudiantil «Rhodes debe caer» (Rodhes Must Fall): Las Universidades Sudafricanas Como Campo De Lucha
Tabula Rasa es una revista científica del área de las ciencias sociales con una periodicidad trimestral, dedicada principalmente a las disciplinas de la Antropología, Historia, Sociología, Trabajo Social, Geografía Humana y Estudios Culturales
Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe: Politics, Power, and Memory
The contested idea of Zimbabwe and the violent power politics: Lessons for South Africa
No abstract available
Epistemic Freedom in Africa
Political science (35 works) · Sociology (32 works) · Law (24 works) · Politics (24 works) · African studies and sociopolitical issues (18 works) · African cultural and philosophical studies (14 works) · African history and culture studies (13 works) · Gender Studies (13 works) · Political economy (13 works) · History (12 works)